Weekly Rap-up of Search Engine Industry News – 9/3 – 9/7

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A summary of search related news items that occurred this week including Wikipedia to challenge the search giants with the launch of Wikia Search in December, eMarketer reports that for the first time in history, online advertising has surpassed radio advertising in dollars spent, Facebook will open user profiles to search engine spiders, Netscape is pulling the plug on its social news service and returning to its former self, iPhone owners are upset over Apple’s decision to cut price of phone by $200 only two months after it was released, and finally, the 2007 edition of SEOmoz’s comic strip recap of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose is available to humor you into the weekend.

Monday

• Wikipedia To Challenge Google and Other Search Engines? – Times Online has an article
  describing how Wikipedia plans on using the power of the people to take on Google and Yahoo. It is no hidden fact that Wikipedia has emerged as one of the internet’s biggest phenomena, altering the way people get information and students and schoolchildren do their homework. In December they will launch a search engine to compete with giants such as Google and Yahoo – Wikia Search. Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales is not out to build a Google killer but does believe that within three years, Wikia could rival Google and other top search engines by using the power of people and machine. This is certainly not a new idea as others have tried to assault Google’s dominance by offering a more “personal” touch – but given Wikipedia’s success, and Wales’s determination, Wikia will be one to watch.

Tuesday

• Online Advertising Surpasses Radio Advertising For the First Time in History - From Mashable, eMarketer reports that spending for online advertising has surpassed ad dollars spent on radio advertising for the first time in 2007, with online marketing reaching $21.7 billion while radio reached $20.4 billion. They are quick to point out that online marketing isn’t growing at the expense of radio marketing but rather that the growth rate for ad dollars spent on radio is speculated as slowing to a crawl at 1.5%, but should continue to increase through 2011 nonetheless.

Wednesday

• Facebook To Open User Profiles to Search Engine Indexing - Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal reports that Facebook will remove their walls and allow search engines to index public profile pages of its users. They plan to open up their search functionality this week and as a result will then give users one month to opt-out of having their profiles indexed by changing their user privacy settings. Loren points out that Facebook is not currently blocking engines from spidering of their user profiles, but most public profiles (which feature the user name, image and basic info) are not accessible due to no sitemaps style communication between the company and search engines.

Thursday

• Netscape Will No Longer Be a Digg Clone - It has been rumored for weeks but now is fact – AOL has announced the end of Netscape as a social news portal. In a statement, Tom Drapeau said, “We received some feedback that people really do associate the Netscape brand with providing mainstream news that is editorially controlled. In fact, we specifically heard that our users do have a desire for a social news experience, but simply didn’t expect to find it on Netscape.com.” TechCrunch also reported that Drapeau claims the social news service will go on at a new site, but failed to name the site or when it would be launched.

Friday

• iPhone Owners Crying Foul Over $200 Price Cut - Surely you have heard that Apple cut the cost of an iPhone from $599 to $399 just two months after they released it. Lesson to be learned here – don’t always rush to buy something new. Those who did are crying foul, even though Steve Jobs offered a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple retail or online store, that is to every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration. Blogger, Kevin Tofel, sums up what many iPhone owners are feeling when he says, ““I just felt so used as a consumer. They hyped up the iPhone for six months and built up our expectations, and then they grabbed our extra $200 and ran.” He is planning to make t-shirts that read, “I was a $200 iPhone beta tester for Apple.” Lots more coverage at Techmeme.

• SES San Jose 2007 in Comic Strip Format – In traditional fashion, Rebecca Kelly has utilized her comic strip skills and put together “SES San Jose 2007 – The Comic Strip“. Enjoy!